


Just A Little Roxanne

by Moorishflower



Series: A Cold Academic Hell [30]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-27
Updated: 2011-07-27
Packaged: 2017-10-21 20:19:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/229355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moorishflower/pseuds/Moorishflower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And it's so challenging / Getting close to you's what I'm imagining / I just wanna see you get down / You gotta let it all out</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just A Little Roxanne

Something’s up with Dean.

Sam doesn’t have any particular reason to think this. It’s not like Dean’s been wandering up and down the hall of their apartment, wailing and gnashing his teeth. He’s been a bit quieter than he usually is, a bit more solitary, but Sam could just as easily chalk that up to the weather, which has been gloomy and damp for the past week and shows no signs of letting up now.

Except for the part where he knows his brother, knows how Dean works, and, sitting across from him and watching him not touch his coffee, Sam _knows_ that something’s up.

He looks down at his coffee, an extra tall double shot with two percent. Dean is drinking his black, with one sugar. It’s the way their father used to take his coffee.Sam has no idea if Dean actually likes it that way, or if he’s just been drinking it for so long that he never thinks to try something new. Sam doesn’t look up. “Something’s on your mind.”

Dean glances at him, and then resolutely picks up his coffee – which he hasn’t touched for at least ten minutes – and sips it. His fists, previously clenched against the table, relax slightly. Not enough to disguise the tension in Dean’s body, though.

“Nothing’s on my mind,” Dean says. He’s still grimacing, slightly, from the taste of his cold coffee. Sam gives him a _look_ , and Dean sort of…flinches, and glances away. Sam tilts his head at him.

“You want to talk about it?” Dean takes another sip of his coffee, seemingly in defiance of Sam and his concern. He grimaces again, quickly setting his cup down. His hand lingers on it. Sam can see the reluctance in the lines of his body, the way he won’t meet Sam’s eyes. Dean likes to think of himself as strong. So strong, in fact, that he doesn’t ever need anyone’s help. The thing is, though, that everyone needs help sometimes. Sam takes a chance and guesses. Truthfully, though, it’s not that hard of a leap of logic to make. “It’s your boyfriend, isn’t it?”

Dean exhales harshly. “Maybe,” he hedges. _Maybe_ , in Sam’s mind, translates into _definitely_. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

“Whatever you want to call him, then. Your beau.” Dean glares at him, nose wrinkled. “Your _whatever_. What’s wrong, Dean? You’ve been weird all week. Are you two having…problems?”

God, Sam hopes not. A miserable Dean is the last thing he wants to deal with on top of all his own problems: his test on Monday, the papers he has to write, Gabriel…

Gabriel isn’t really a problem, though. More of a…an _issue_. A non-problem issue. It’s just that Gabriel…he’s not _pushy_. Gabriel never asks anything of him, never tries to propel Sam forward when it comes to things he feels hesitant about. Gabriel doesn’t make him uncomfortable, not ever, but Sam feels, sometimes, like he’s making Gabriel wait. Like he’s being unfair, somehow, and it’s not Gabriel making him feel that way, either. It’s all him. He keeps trying to tell himself that being with Gabriel is no different to being with Jessica, but was he ever this hesitant with Jess? Was he ever this nervous?

“I don’t know, Sammy,” Dean says, and Sam snaps back to attention. “I mean, I sort of _do_ know, but I don’t know _why_.”

He bites his lip. “Have you been arguing?”

“Not…really? Okay, promise that nothing I say here _ever_ leaves this table, okay? You don’t tell _anyone_ else, not even your own boyfriend.”

Sam inwardly flinches at the mention of Gabriel – not by name, thank God Dean doesn’t know that much yet – but manages to keep himself outwardly composed. “I promise.”

Dean leans forward, almost conspiratory. “All right. So, we’ve been seeing each other for a while now, you know? Since I first met him, it’s been like…five months, I guess? And it’s been good. Really good.”

“But?”

“Well, I guess…let’s say, _hypothetically_ , that…he keeps telling me I’m not ready.”

“For…?”

Dean glances over his shoulder to make sure no one is listening, then leans forward and hisses, “ _Sex_.” Sam’s eyes widen.

“Oh. _Oh_.”

“Hypothetically!”

“Right, of course. So, uh, hypothetically, did you ask him why?”

Dean thinks his head down on his hands, grumbling to himself before answering. Sam eyes him, not sure whether he should be laughing or feeling sympathetic. “He just _smiles_ , dude. And then he does something to distract me, like, I dunno, kisses me, or gives me food or something.”

“You’re like a lab rat, Dean, are food and sex the only things you think about?” Dean’s foot lashes out under the table, catching Sam’s shin. He laughs. “Okay, okay. So, uh, if he isn’t answering your questions, that means he wants you to figure it out on your own, right?”

“Or he doesn’t want me to figure it out at all.”

“I’m sure that’s not true. Start at the beginning. Has it always been you who…?”

“Suggested it? I mean, I guess. I dunno. The first time it was definitely me.”

“How did you ask?”

“Ask? Uh, we were making out in the car…”

Sam wrinkles his nose. “Oh dude, I _sit_ in that car, _gross_.”

Dean kicks him again. This time it actually hurts, a little, but Sam snorts anyways. “…and I asked him if I could come in, you know. If he’d let me stay the night. He told me he didn’t think I was ready and then he got out and he went inside.”

Sam folds his hands together, staring at Dean from across the table, trying to work it out in his head. Dean wants his relationship with his boyfriend to progress. He wants to have sex. For Dean, sex isn’t always necessarily intimate…more a way of holding on to someone. Is he afraid of his boyfriend leaving him? He’s moving so fast because…he wants to experience what he thinks of as being the “main part” of a relationship before he’s left alone? Sam frowns and asks, “Okay, this might sound weird, but, uh…is it always like that?”

“Always like what? A lot of build-up and then blue balls for the rest of the night? If that’s what you’re asking, the answer is yes.”

Sam rolls his eyes so hard he’s surprised he doesn’t give himself a headache. “ _No_. I mean, are you always making out in some uncomfortable place when you ask if he’ll let you stay?”

Dean raises his hand, fingers splayed, and begins ticking them off. “In the car, on the couch, in the kitchen, once…”

Dean stops him mid-sentence. “Have you considered…I don’t know, actually trying to be romantic about it?”

“Romantic? What the fuck do you mean, romantic?”

God help him, but he has to explain romance to Dean? He has to explain _seduction_? “Like…inviting him out to dinner, driving him home, asking him if you can stay for coffee…”

“I thought coffee was a euphemism for sex.”

“It is, a lot of the time. But it doesn’t always have to be.”

“That is the sappiest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

Sam sighs. “Look, just give it a try, okay? Do something romantic for him, don’t try to make any advances, and see how it goes. Maybe you’ve just been trying to go too fast.”

Dean mutters into his arm, and then, after a few moments of contemplation, he lifts his head and grabs his coffee cup. He stands, and Sam follows him, watching as Dean dumps his cold coffee into the trash. Together, they head out into the early morning chill, Sam’s hands stuffed into his pockets, his earmuffs hanging loose around his neck. He doesn’t throw his own coffee out. He still has a little left.

“Yeah,” Dean says, just as they’re about to enter the lecture hall for religious studies. “Yeah, okay.”

Sam grins. “Okay what?”

“Just _okay_. Don’t push it.”

Laughing, Sam opens the door for Dean, and they walk into the lecture hall together, their shoulders almost touching.

~

Something is up with Dean. Or rather, something is _still_ up, except this time Sam can’t blame Dean’s secretive moodiness on problems with his boyfriend. When Sam had asked (for the _second_ time, he reminds himself), all Dean had done was stare at him for a moment and then _smile_. It had been a slow, meddling smile, like how he’d grinned when Sam was still a kid expecting presents from Santa under their tiny plastic tree. It was an _I know something that you don’t know_ smile.

“Don’t worry about it,” he’d said. “Everything’s fine.”

That had been Wednesday night, after Dean had come home from work. He’d been smeared all over with grease and motor oil (to the point where he’d jokingly yelled at Sam from the bathroom to come and help him wash his shoulders and back, a summons that Sam had resolutely ignored), but he’d looked happy – if a bit anxious – so Sam hadn’t thought too much of it.

Now, though, he’s staring into the fridge, it’s Friday morning, barely even seven o’clock yet, and there are four lobster tails in a bowl staring back at him. Well, not staring, obviously, they don’t have eyes, but it _feels_ like, if they did have eyes, they’d be staring. Like Sam is expected to do something with them.

He holds the door open for what feels like a long time, having a non-staring contest with the lobster tails. Eventually, he pushes the bowl aside and grabs the milk from behind it, carrying it to the counter – and his bowl of cereal – and letting the fridge door swing shut behind him. He’s just dipping his spoon into his breakfast when Dean wanders into the room, cell phone in hand, texting rapidly. Sam eats his cereal while Dean cycles through a variety of facial expressions: anxiety, relief, elation, and finally bland neutrality as he lifts his head and sees Sam staring at him. Sam lowers his spoon.

“You’re planning something,” he says. Dean shrugs, but Sam just saw Dean emote more in a single minute than he has during the entirety of every other relationship he’s had. Something occurs to him. “Does this have anything to do with the lobster tails in the fridge?”

“They have to defrost.”

“That’s not the point. Since when do you eat _lobster_?”

Dean makes a face at him. “Don’t you have a test you should be worrying about?”

True, Sam _does_ have a test…but he also likes solving mysteries, and this one is fairly easy. Defrosting lobster tails in the fridge, a nervous Dean…it obviously has to do with his boyfriend. Obviously. Is he making dinner for him? That would be sweet (and thus not like Dean at all), but Sam’s never seen Dean invite his boyfriend over to the apartment. Sometimes he gets the feeling that Dean is ashamed of how small it is, how cluttered, ashamed of the fact that they don’t have tons of money. Whether that’s true or not isn’t the point, though. The point is that Dean may or may not be cooking dinner, and he may or may not be bringing it over to his boyfriend’s place as a surprise. Which is…nice. Maybe he’s taking Sam’s advice for once.

Sam spends most of the day thinking about Dean and his mysterious boyfriend, and why Dean has never told Sam the guy’s name, or what he looks like, and why they’ve never met before. Is Dean ashamed of him? No, the way he talks about him, even around Sam, makes that seem unlikely. Is Dean ashamed of _Sam_? He doesn’t want to think that. He tries to chalk Dean’s secretiveness up to feeling inadequate because of their financial situation, but it only partially works, and, as a result, Sam is quiet and frustrated for most of the day.

After class he trudges wearily back to the Impala, feeling like he hasn’t slept in a week, or maybe like he’s just been hit by a truck. He wants nothing more than to go home and crawl into bed with a good book. Maybe turn the heating up to seventy-five so he can stick his feet close to the vent and keep them warm. Logically, he knows none of that is likely, because a. he has both homework and that test on Monday, and b. when he slides into the car alongside his brother, the first thing that he notices is Dean’s fingers tapping against the steering wheel. Sam grabs his seatbelt and pulls it across his waist.

“Dude,” he says. “You’re practically vibrating.”

Dean glances at him. His fingers still on the steering wheel, but there’s still a sort of caged energy lingering about him. Like he’s just been electrified or something. “Had too much coffee.”

He’s seriously trying to lie? “No you didn’t, I watched you. Are you planning something with your boyfriend?” Of course he is, Sam _knows_ he is, but getting Dean to admit it is…he doesn’t know. It’s important, somehow? But Dean just looks at him.

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

Sam snorts. That’s…almost an admission. “Your _whatever_.”

“Don’t you have anything productive to do? Like volunteer at a soup kitchen or win the Nobel Prize or something?”

Sam huffs, rolling his eyes and then glancing away. “I’m just trying to figure out if I should expect you home at a decent hour.”

Later, Sam will think back to the moment and kick himself for not noticing Dean’s slightly guilty look, and the way he’d fumbled for his keys and hastily started the car. Now, though, all Sam can think about is getting home, his bed, and a good book.

~

Of all the things Sam had expected to happen on a Friday night, being shanghaied into going to the new club downtown hadn’t been one of them.

“I’m going to murder Jo,” Sam says. Gabriel makes a sympathetic noise on the other end of the line. “And Dean. I’m going to murder him, too.”

“Can I watch? It would make a good horror flick.”

“You can _help_. Jo wants me to go clubbing with her.”

“Are you dressed up?”

Sam glances down at the pants that Jo had presented to him, skin-tight and almost hard to breathe in. He doesn’t know how she figured out his pants size (he suspects Dean), but she’d had them with her when Sam had gone over to her house in order to try and persuade her not to go.

She’d also had the shirt.

The less said about the shirt, the better.

“I might be,” Sam grudgingly admits. “Look, just come to The Roadhouse on Fifth Avenue. These pants are really uncomfortable.”

“You’re wearing tight pants?”

“Gabriel…”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes. No, wait, god _damnit_ , Joker! Twenty minutes. Tops.” There’s the sound of a dog barking in the background, and Sam grins at the thought of what Joker’s gotten up to this time. Gabriel loves his dog dearly, but Joker has a sense of humor to rival his master’s. It’s apparently not unusual to find Gabriel mourning the loss of his favorite pair of shoes a couple times a year.

“I’ll see you then,” Sam murmurs, and Gabriel presses his lips noisily to the phone before hanging up. When Jo finds him, a few minutes later, he’s still grinning.

“You look good,” he offers, and Jo twirls in place, her skirt flaring. She’s wearing black and gold leggings, a denim skirt, and a halter-top in defiance of the cold outside. Her arms are covered with goosebumps, but when she steps closer to Sam and hugs him she feels warm. “Is this like, social clubbing or get drunk clubbing?”

“Bit of this, bit of that.” Jo grabs his arm, pulling him towards the entrance to the club. The music thumps inside, and Sam winces. So much for his quiet night in. “Is your boyfriend coming?”

“He said he’d be here in twenty minutes.” He stops, refusing to let Jo pull him inside just yet. “Look, Jo…you can’t tell Dean about him.”

She tilts her head at him. “Why not? He already knows you’ve got a boyfriend.”

“Yeah, but he doesn’t know, uh, _who_. And he’s…older, you know? Maybe a lot older. But he’s a good guy, I swear, he never tries to push me or anything, and I’m really interested in him. So swear that you won’t tell Dean, even if he asks you.”

Jo blinks, eyeing him, studying his face. Sam bites his bottom lip and tries to look pathetic. Jo sighs.

“Fine. I won’t tell him, but you can’t keep secrets forever.”

“I know. Believe me, I know, but he’s keeping secrets, too.”

“And that makes it okay? Be the bigger man. _Tell him_.”

“Easy for you to say,” Sam mutters, and Jo grabs his wrist again, tugging him past the line of people waiting to get into the club. The bouncers glance at them, but allow them to pass.

The inside of the club is dark, hot, almost humid with the amount of bodies moving beneath the flashing strobe lights. The DJ is situated at the front of the massive room, his booth set high above the mass of dancers. Sam squints. The DJ looks familiar, but before he can get a better look Jo is steering him through the crowd, guiding him towards the bar. The bartender is a woman, her long hair pulled back in a tight ponytail as she…

Sam stares. “Ellen?”

Jo, grinning at him, chirps, “Surprise! We bought this place a while ago. Mom wanted to turn it into a bar, but I convinced her a club would be better.”

“Jesus,” Sam says, and Ellen leans forward, eyeing him.

“Sam Winchester? What’s my daughter done now?” Her eyes flick down, and then back up again. “And why are you dressed like that?”

Sam tries to pull his shirt down lower, but it doesn’t reach past his navel. He grimaces. “You’ll want to talk to Jo about that. I didn’t know you bought this place!”

“A while ago, yeah. Jo told me this town didn’t need another bar, but old habits die hard.” Jo sticks her tongue out at her mother, then lets go of Sam’s wrist and disappears into the seething crowd. Sam stays behind, leaning against the bar.

“Are you and Bobby not partners anymore?”

Ellen laughs softly, the sound lost in the pulse of the music and the shout of the dancers. “Of course we are, but fixing cars isn’t my dream, and, to be honest, it’s not the sort of thing I’d want for Jo.”

“Doesn’t Jo get the place when Bobby retires, though?”

“She was supposed to. I convinced Bobby that it wasn’t the best idea. She needs something bigger to hold her attention. Maybe, if she’s smart, she can turn this club into a chain. Build more all across the country. I think that’d be enough to keep her occupied, don’t you?”

Sam frowns. “Then what about the garage? When Bobby retires, is it just gonna…close?”

“Well, now.” Ellen sweeps a rag over the bartop, glaring at an unruly couple a few seats down. “Suppose that’s up to Bobby and your brother.”

“Dean? What’s Dean got to…?”

Ellen smiles, quiet and secretive, a to yourself smile, and Sam pauses in the middle of his sentence, working through it in his head. If Jo’s not slated to get the garage, then that only leaves one other regular worker, and that’s…

“No way,” he says. “No way, you think Bobby will give the place to _Dean_?”

“He will if he listens to me. It’s Bobby, though. Never know what you’re gonna get with that man. Still, he’s known your brother for ages, and he thinks the world of you two. You’re like sons to him.” Ellen nods towards the entrance to the club, eyes glinting. “Where is he, anyways? Or has he booted you from the house?”

“Ask me how badly I want to kill him,” Sam says, and Ellens tilts her head back and laughs.

“That’s how it is with brothers, I guess. Here.” She pulls a bottle and a glass out from under the bar, sliding both towards Sam. “Scotch, on the house. ‘Fraid it’s the shit cheap kind.”

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” Sam says, uncapping the bottle and pouring some of the scotch into the glass. “Hopefully I won’t be here for long. My…” He hesitates, and Ellen snorts.

“You couldn’t keep a secret if it was attached to your ass. You’re allowed to have a love life, you know.”

“I just don’t want Dean to find out.”

“They bad news?”

“No!” Sam shakes his head vigorously, and then sips his scotch for added fortitude. “No, he’s amazing. I don’t know what he sees in me, really. He’s just…older than I am. And his job…” Sam leans forward. Not that he needs to, the noise of the club more than covers up the sound of his voice. “He works at the school. I don’t want Dean to worry about me, and I don’t want him to think that he’s taking advantage of me or anything.”

“How much older?”

Sam winces. “A…couple years?”

Ellen narrows her eyes.

“More than ten years?”

“ _Sam Winchester_.”

“See? That’s how Dean will react! Please, Ellen, don’t tell him. You don’t have to worry about me.”

Ellen huffs, forcefully sliding a pair of beers down the bar to some waiting customers. “On one condition. I get to meet him.”

“He’ll be here soon,” Sam promises. “Hopefully we’ll be able to get out of here, now that I know Jo’s okay.”

“Is that what she told you? She didn’t feel safe?”

“She told me she was coming here alone, and I just…”

“Those calf eyes of hers will fool anybody. Jo can more than take care of herself, but the thought’s appreciated. You just let me know when your partner comes in so I can take a look at him.”

Sam nods and holds his scotch close to his chest, feeling weird and exposed in his tiny shirt, his tight pants. People keep jostling against him on their way to the bar, and eventually he drifts away from Ellen, looking for a quieter place to stand and wait.

When he finds a quiet table against the wall of the club, close to the door, he’s quick to grab it, setting down his bottle and his glass and claiming the seat facing the bar for himself. He can see Jo, mingling amongst the crowd of dancers, her skirt twirling, a few men and women eyeing her appreciatively as she passes. Sam reminds himself of what Ellen said – that Jo can take care of herself – and he sips his scotch as he waits for his twenty minutes of purgatory to be up.

A few people wander towards his table, drunk or tired and looking for a place to sit, but Sam resolutely puts his feet up on the other seat each time. The only company he wants to entertain is Gabriel.

He’s surprised, when he looks down at his glass next, to find that he’s drained the entire thing. He quickly pours more, in the hopes that it will deter anyone wanting to buy him a drink. He thinks, blearily, that it would be a wise idea to not drink the whole bottle, to take some home to Dean. Dean usually prefers whiskey over scotch, but if he’s in a bad enough mood he’ll drink anything so long as it has enough alcohol in it.

Hopefully, the fact that he and his boyfriend are probably having sex right now will delay any future bad moods. Sam shakes his head vigorously, trying to rid himself of that particularly awful mental image. More alcohol is called for.

He’s just taking another sip when a pleasant voice says from behind him, “What’s a nice young man like yourself doing drinking all alone?”

Shit. Sam tries to raise his feet and stick them on the seat across from them, but he’s too late. A man wends his way around the table, early to mid forties, his steel-grey hair cut short and his dark eyes trained on Sam. He’s wearing a suit, his jacket draped over the crook of one arm, his tie loosened, his sleeve cuffs unbuttoned.

Sam is startled to find that the man isn’t unattractive. It’s not how he feels with Gabriel, of course. Sam’s _never_ felt the way he does with Gabriel. There’s an undercurrent of appreciation in his brain, though, trained on this businessman with the dark eyes, and Sam feels almost ashamed of it. He knows, logically, that he has nothing to be ashamed of. You don’t get in trouble for having eyes, after all. He feels, though, almost like he’s failed a test. He glares moodily down at his scotch. Maybe it’s the booze.

“I’m, uh, waiting for someone,” he says, and the man smiles at him.

“Well, I’m sure they won’t mind if I keep you company until they get here.”

Then, before Sam can protest, the man slides into the other seat, resting his elbows neatly on the table and eyeing Sam up and down.

“Look,” Sam says, “I’m waiting for my boyfriend, he’ll be here soon.” Five minutes? Sam can hold this guy off for five minutes, can’t he? God, his head feels heavy, and the bottle of scotch is…depressingly not even _close_ to being full anymore. He really needs to start saying “no” when people offer him drinks.

“And like I said, I’m sure he won’t mind if I keep you company. Or does your boyfriend not like you talking to people?”

“No! No, he’s not like…” Something firm brushes against Sam’s leg under the table, and he scoots back so fast he almost knocks the table over. His bottle of scotch wobbles alarmingly. “Woah! Woah, not cool!”

“We’re only talking.” The man folds his hands, grinning. “Unless you want to stop playing games? Come on, if it’s money that you want, I’ve got plenty.”

“Money? Jesus Christ.”

Someone clears their throat behind them, loudly and unapologetically. Sam glances over his shoulder and has never been more glad to see Gabriel in his life. He almost springs up out of his seat, cleaving himself as close to Gabriel’s side as he can, pressing his nose to the crown of Gabriel’s head. Breathing him in. “Thank God,” he mutters. Gabriel continues to stare, unnervingly, at the man in the suit.

“There a problem?”

The man slowly raises his hands, then gathers up his jacket and quietly leaves the table.

“At least he wasn’t bad looking,” Gabriel says, after a moment, and Sam huffs laughter. “Seriously, I’m actually a little jealous.”

“Don’t be.” Sam kisses Gabriel’s forehead, not caring that he’s probably drunk and a little too publicly affectionate for Gabriel’s tastes. “He thought I was looking for a good time, I guess.”

“You’re telling me you aren’t?”

“Not with him.”

Gabriel grabs his ass and laughs. Sam, after a moment, decides that getting Gabriel to let go is too much trouble, and he lets the touch linger. “Right answer, kiddo. Come on, let’s get you home. You smell like a brewery.”

“I told Ellen that I’d let her meet you first. Ellen’s…she’s the bartender. She’s one of Dean’s bosses.”

Gabriel’s grip on his ass loosens, becoming marginally more professional. Well, more professional as far as grabbing someone’s ass can be. “Basically like meeting the parents, huh?”

“I…guess?”

Gabriel takes his hand, pulling him towards the bar. Sam grabs the bottle of scotch – it’s still got some liquid sloshing around in it – and follows.

“I can do that,” Gabriel says, so softly Sam almost doesn’t catch it. “I can do that for you.”

Sam feels something warm spreading through his chest, a warmth that he’s reluctant to attribute to the alcohol. Grinning, he lets Gabriel pull him right up to the bar, and he feels like nothing can ever go wrong again.

~

Gabriel drives him home. He talks animatedly about Ellen’s response to him (cautiously hopeful, but with a hint of suspicion), about Jo’s request to dance with him (interrupted only by Sam’s sudden not-entirely-fabricated headache), about getting together Sunday for breakfast, and about the weather, which has suddenly taken a turn for the worse. He parks the car in the apartment’s lot, tires sloshing in the puddles that have suddenly taken over every available surface, and then turns to Sam, his grin softening.

“You all right, there?”

Sam hums softly. “Mm. Tired. Little sore.”

“You’re lucky you’re not puking.”

“I don’t puke.”

“Never?”

“Not when I drink.”

Gabriel laughs, unlocking the doors and then offering Sam his jacket.

“I can go if you want,” he says. “Or I can help you to…”

Sam glances up at the sky, tuning Gabriel’s voice out. The rain pours down in fat drops, so fast that they patter against the ground like tiny bullets. He opens his door, sticking his head out and letting the rain wash over him. Every last trace of snow is gone, and the air is warm. He thinks it might finally be Spring. What is it people say? That Spring is a time for renewal? Growth?

Taking risks, maybe?

“Stay with me,” he says, and he can feel Gabriel’s eyes boring against the back of his head. “For tonight. Stay with me.”

“Are we talking…stay as in stay or as in…?”

“Just stay.” He pulls his head back in, brushing the water from his eyes, his cheeks and hair. Gabriel leans across the seats, cupping Sam’s cheeks and holding his face still. When Sam talks, he can feel the pressure of Gabriel’s palms against his lips, the inside of his mouth. “I’m cold and wet and I don’t even know if Dean will be there to talk to me, and I just…I want to lie in bed with you and have my pillows smell like you and…”

Gabriel presses his thumb against Sam’s mouth, effectively silencing him.

“Okay,” he says. “But you realize this is becoming a habit? Getting drunk and cuddling?”

“Better habit than cocaine.”

Gabriel blinks, and then laughs, startled-sounding and loud. “I guess it is. Come on, you lush, let’s get you inside.”

Gabriel helps him stumble out of the car, helps him to the apartment, and even helps him fumble his keys out of his pocket. Inside it’s warm and dry, and it smells like pasta. All Sam wants is to go to bed.

“Gabriel,” he mumbles. He drifts towards his bedroom, assuming that Gabriel will follow, somehow still surprised when he’s right and Gabriel is right there at his back as he opens his door and steps inside. “Am I being…selfish?”

“Selfish? How the hell would you be selfish?”

Sam clumsily toes his shoes off and then flops down on his bed, not caring that he’s getting the sheets wet. Gabriel rolls his eyes, reaching for Sam’s socks, and then for his jeans, peeling them off and draping them over the back of Sam’s desk chair. Sam stares up at the overhead lights, squinting.

“Just…by waiting to, you know, sleep with you, I guess.”

“Jesus Christ.” Gabriel coaxes him up into a sitting position, pulling off his shirt and, after giving it a distasteful look, throwing it over his shoulder and then ignoring it. Sam, wearing only his boxers, feels no more vulnerable than he had felt when he was wearing clothes. He likes that. He likes that he can trust Gabriel. “Who the fuck told you that you were selfish?”

“No one! It’s just that we’ve been together for months, and…”

“And time’s got nothing to do with it. If you’re still not comfortable after a year, then…” Gabriel pauses. “Well, then maybe we should go and see a psychiatrist or something. But seriously, Sam, you’re doing things the right way, waiting until you feel ready. I didn’t do that.”

“What happened?”

“I had a shit time, that’s what happened. So don’t worry about it.” He leans down, kissing Sam on the forehead, the cheek, the corner of his mouth. Sam breathes in the smell of him, wraps his arms around Gabriel’s waist and pulls him down until they’re pressed together.

“Thank you, love,” Sam murmurs, and closes his eyes.

He doesn’t see Gabriel’s startled, pleased expression, already lost to sleep, but he feels Gabriel’s fingers carding through his hair, and the chaste kiss against his cheek.


End file.
